Festive crowd rallies against government

VIENNA, Austria {AP} Vienna's streets took on a carnival atmosphere Saturday as Austrians continued their peaceful protests against the new government inaugurated last week.

The appointment of the government, which includes the right-wing Freedom Party of Joerg Haider, has generated a wave of protest in Austria and abroad.

Earlier in the day 2,000 Austrians held a peaceful demonstration in the western city of Innsbruck; 3,000 demonstrated in Linz, about 75 miles west of Vienna; and 400 protested in Feldkirch, on the Austrian-Swiss border, the Austrian Press Agency reported.

Around 2,000 people representing different political and interest groups gathered at Vienna's main railway station in the early afternoon for a march down one of the city's busiest shopping streets.

Responding to organizers' requests for peaceful demonstrations, protesters carried banners, European Union flags and made noise with pots and pans, whistles, drums and shakers.

The crowd organized by communist, socialist and union groups included parents carrying children and foreigners living in Austria.

By evening, the protesters arrived at the Karl Marx Hof, a public housing complex built in the 1920s that was the scene of heavy fighting during the Austrian civil war between communists and fascists in the early 1930s.

One of the marchers, a 28-year-old musician who would give only his first name, Helmut, said he approved of the diplomatic measures taken by the European Union and Israel against the new government.

"I think its actually not so bad," he said. "Only when reactions came from abroad did people here wake up to what is happening. It was necessary."